


First, Do No Harm

by merae2888



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Romance, Season/Series 05, Wolf Pack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-22 16:06:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merae2888/pseuds/merae2888
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Depths of sleep can’t shield Lydia from the shrill clanking, staccato banging or the thick, hot stench of flowing blood. There’s screaming in her ears before her mouth cracks open to copy the noise. Her lungs burning for air is what finally jars her into half consciousness. Her back arches off the bed as she gags, chocking on the iron stench flooding her nostrils and straining her brain. </p><p>Or</p><p>Lydia gets her Banshee tingles while Stiles fights with Donovan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Banshee Intuition

Depths of sleep can’t shield Lydia from the shrill clanking, staccato banging or the thick, hot stench of flowing blood. There’s screaming in her ears before her mouth cracks open to copy the noise. Her lungs burning for air is what finally jars her into half consciousness. Her back arches off the bed as she gags, chocking on the iron stench flooding her nostrils and straining her brain. 

The IV stuck in her arm tugs painfully as she tries to scramble out of bed. She doesn’t get one foot on the floor when a nurse descends on her, tries to calm her down, shushing her when she tries to tell her that something urgent has happened, that she needs to go. 

“You need to rest. It was just a nightmare, dear.”

But the nurse doesn’t know how real nightmares can be in this town. 

Lydia feels the call of death in her bones. Her heart thunders in her chest, her limbs twitch with the overwhelming desire to sprint from the room but she forces herself to lie still until the nurse seems satisfied. She checks Lydia’s chart that’s hanging on the end of her bed, makes a few notes before pulling a syringe out of her pocket. 

As the nurse reaches over Lydia for her IV, Lydia’s vision blurs for a split second, and she knows she sees a dread doctor hunching over her before she blinks and the kindly nurse is grinning down at her again.

“That should help you sleep.” 

Lydia smiles faintly. The cold liquid is mixing with her blood and she knows that she’ll be out cold if too much gets in her system. Without fully considering the complications, she moves her arm under the blanket and rips the IV needle out of her skin. Her blood spurts out of her arm with the release of the tension and she tucks it against her body so the nurse won’t see the blood stain the sheets. 

The nurse marks Lydia’s latest dosage on her meds chart and finally leaves the room, pulling the door close but not completely shut. 

Lydia gets up from the bed, all hazy, half-formed movements while she attempts to dress herself in something that provides moderately more coverage than her hospital gown. She rips the flimsy material into strips and ties them around her arm to staunch the blood flow from where she pulled out her IV. 

She peeks into the hallway and, as luck would have it, there’s no one. Her observant nurse is nowhere to be seen. She tiptoes to the elevators and hits the button for the parking garage, only pondering for a second the idea of finding Melissa and asking for help. 

It could be nothing. 

Her feet start in a direction without her permission and she gets that damn intuition that’s impossible to ignore. It’s almost like she’s drunk, with no control over herself in the larger sense but filled with buzzing purpose for a singular cause she can’t even put a name to yet. 

The streets of Beacon Hills are empty and creepy as all hell late at night but she’s propelled forward on bare feet, overlarge sweatpants dragging across the ground and Jackson’s old, ratty lacrosse sweatshirt slipping off her shoulder.

When she spots Stile’s Jeep in the school parking lot, she trips over her own feet, spiraling out on her hands and knees as a desperate cry gathers in her stomach and surges up her throat. She inhales deeply, then a hand clamps over her mouth.

“Don’t scream,” Stiles whispers urgently in her ear. “Don’t scream, Lydia.”

His arm winds around her stomach and he pulls her up and drags her into the shadows of his Jeep. She grasps for purchase as he half lifts her to her feet, her nails bite into his forearm and he hisses into her hair. “It’s okay, Lydia. Just get in. It’s okay.”

His hand comes down from her mouth and the scream dies right where it was born. In the chilly light of the moon, she can see blood on his fingers. “Stiles.” She turns in his arms as he reaches for the door handle. “Are you alright?”

Stiles squints down at her and there's something distinctly uneasy in the way his eyes flit over her face. His gaze drops to her arm and he covers her makeshift bandage with his long fingers. His gaze rakes over her body, almost tangible with the weight it carries. He takes in her outfit and her dirty feet and snaps his eyes back to hers. "What happened? What are you- did you break out of the hospital?"

Her brow rises at his accusatory tone and she’s suddenly filled with a biting anger. "Yeah, I did actually. Banshee senses were tingling. Which brings me to my next question.” She grabs his wrist a little more forcefully than necessary and holds his bloody fingers up until they catch the moonlight. The sight of his pale flesh painted scarlet seems to rock Stiles back into the moment. “Is there a dead body in there?" she hisses as she nods over at the school. His eyes find hers in the almost dark and even though she can barely see the outline of his face, his eyes shine back at hers, clear and overwhelming terror churning in their depths. 

Stiles’ tongue darts out to frantically lick his lips. “I don’t…I didn’t mean-” 

A siren sounds off twice and then he’s shoving her into the front seat while she protests, loudly. 

“Stiles, what are you doing? What’s going on?”

“Just get in. I’ll explain everything, okay, just…please-“

She slides over with a huff and he shuts the door and cranks the engine, backing them into a dark spot just as a cop car pulls into the lot. 

The cop is far enough away to not see them sitting in the nearly black front seat. “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound,” Stiles breathes, his voice like a dissipating cloud, the syllables barely registering with her before they disappear into the distance between them. 

The old Lydia Martin would have been climbing out to go talk to the cop herself. Banshee Lydia, sits still as a statue, eyes riveted on Stiles’ face as he stares out at the front doors of the school. They both jump when the sheriff’s station’s radio sitting on his console beeps to life, relaying the message that there’s nothing at the school, that it must have been a prank. 

Stiles almost caves in on himself, seeming more distraught than ever as the cop drives off. “What the fuck?”

“What in the hell is going on?” Lydia whispers. There’s blood on the steering wheel now, where he’s been tapping his fingers against it. “Stiles!”

“Stay here!”

“No! Are you insane?” 

“Lydia, I gotta go see-“

“See what?” She clamps down on his arm, twisting until he grimaces in pain. “You’re not getting out of this Jeep until you tell me what happened here.” 

It seems to take him an extreme amount of effort to wrench his eyes away from the school and look at her. He licks his lips again and she recognizes the nervous tick. He grips his shoulder, prodding the area with the pads of his fingers. “Am I dreaming?”

Lydia reaches over without a thought and pulls his hand away. The blood there is still slightly sticky but she twists their fingers together regardless. “This is real. You’re not dreaming, Stiles. It’s going to be okay. Whatever happened-“ 

“I didn’t mean to-“

“Stiles,” she places her palm on his cheek and lifts his face to hers. “Just talk to me and…we’ll figure it out.” 

He exhales all shakily like he did on the floor of the locker room when she had to figure out a way to breathe for him. “We always figure it out,” she says, a little desperate herself. The way he’s shaking tells her that kissing him won’t be enough this time. 

He paws at his shoulder again and the fabric shifts just enough for her to see the bright red marks on his pale flesh. “He attacked me and I -” He holds his arm up and mimes swinging, “with my wrench and then he chased me into the library and I was just trying to get away. I didn’t mean to…to…”

“To what?”

Stiles turns petrified, wet eyes on her. He seems to stare through her. “I killed him.”

“Who?” It’s the last question she needs answered before she can start thinking normally again. 

“Donovan.” 

She can’t help it: an enormous sigh of relief escapes her. She didn’t know whom she expected him to name but to hear that particular one felt like a blessing in the bleak quiet of his Jeep. It takes her a moment to gather herself before she speaks again. “It’s okay, Stiles. He attacked you, right? That’s that you said.” 

Stiles nods but he’s so dazed out she’s not sure he even understands what she’s saying to him. “This,” she reaches up and circles the wound on his shoulder, “he gave you that?” 

Stiles fingers the mark again and their fingers brush. “It was weird, like he had a million tiny teeth in his palm.”

Lydia shudders but chooses to ignore that for now. One nightmare at a time. “Okay, so he attacked you and you defended yourself. That’s it. That’s what happened, okay?”

He nods again like he’s not sure what he’s agreeing to. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? Stiles?”

“I have to go see…the cop didn’t find him. I have to go-”

He falls out of the Jeep and she hastens to catch up to him, tripping over her too-long sweatpants. Stiles strides purposely toward the library, not slowing when she calls out his name, continuously muttering, under his breath, “have to see, have to see.”

The library throbs its emptiness at them as Stiles paces around a spot where there are large poles leaning against a table. He swipes his finger up the metal and it comes away red. Lydia can smell the death in here like it’s a piece of rotten fruit. Her bones want to shatter with the screams that are suddenly thrumming through her body but it’s a different kind of pressure than what she normally feels at a crime scene.

“I left him right here.” Stiles gestures wildly as he tells her about the accident, how he climbed the scaffolding to escape his pursuer, then pulled the bolt out and the poles came crashing down and impaled him. “I don’t understand. He was right here.”

Lydia sways on her feet, dizzy from watching him coupled with the nausea from the smell and the sensation of death that’s been coiling under her skin since they walked in here. “Someone took him.”

Stiles turns to her so slowly, his eyes popped out in horror, dark as the room so that he looks possessed. “Or, he’s not dead.”

“He’s dead.” She says it as if she was a witness, as if she felt his heart stop beating.

“Is that Banshee or genius intuition?”

“Both.”

Stiles cracks a horrible, half-formed smile that dissolves as soon as it appeared. 

“We should call Scott.” Stiles is shaking his head before she even finishes her sentence. 

“No.”

“No?”

Stiles ticks his head to the side, near his fresh injury. “He won’t understand.”

“Of course he will!”

Sharply, he faces her again, anger and frustration pouring off him. She can practically taste his anxiety. “No, he won’t. Scott’s too good. He wouldn’t have done this. He would’ve…”

“He’s your best friend. He’ll understand.” 

“No, he…” Stiles shakes his head. “He’s too good, he won’t….he’ll look at me differently, he’ll…I’ll lose him. How’s he going to feel when I tell him I can do something like this?”

“Stiles, listen to me.” He sniffs loudly and tilts his ear at her. “It’s not like you came here gunning him down. You didn’t hunt for him, you didn’t intend for any of this to happen. You called the cops.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Why not?” 

“Because I’m glad.”

“What?” 

“I’m glad he’s dead. I wanted him dead.” 

She has no response because she gets it. She’s been there, after her possession, imagining Peter Hale’s death with a sick glee, wondering if the final snap of his neck would sound sweet and satisfying. It had made her hate herself a little, how much she’d wanted it. She can see that dawning horror in Stiles now, that realization that you’re capable of the most gruesome things, the incomparable knowledge that with just a little persuasion, you can become the worst version of yourself. 

She has no idea what to say and that’s somehow worse, her hopeful pleadings giving way to grim silence. “Stiles-“

“I can’t lose Scott. I can’t.” He moves to her in two long strides, grips her arms almost painfully. “Don’t say anything. Please.”

She closes her eyes for a second. His grief-stricken face is making tears burn the back of her eyes. “I’m not going to lie to Scott,” she tells him quietly. 

He nods and he drops his hands. 

“I won’t tell him either but you have to. You do. You have to tell him.”

He nods again, his head sinking forward like a scolded little boy and she hates every second of this because she can’t make it better for him. She touches his cheek, traces the cure of his bone until he leans his face into her hand. “Scott loves you.” He shakes his head. “He does, I know he does. You’re his brother. You have to have faith that what you two have is stronger than anything.” 

His eyes are over-bright with tears, his lip trembles and Lydia has to stop herself from tipping forward and kissing him. She lets her hand trail down to his pulse and presses against his life’s beat. 

It suddenly occurs to her how easily she could’ve felt the tingle of Stiles’ death instead of Donovan’s. These feelings she gets are never specific. It could’ve just as easily been Stiles’ blood she’d smelled in her dream. 

He gazes at her with a longing admiration she hasn’t seen in some time and she closes the space between them and wraps her arms around his back. His heartbeat was too strong for his chest, too fast for a human. He held her awkwardly, using just his arms so that he wouldn’t get blood on her clothes. 

“You could’ve died, Stiles.” He feels heavy even though he puts none of his weight on her. The notion that a million bits of him have been cracked and could float away on the night’s air tightens her grip around him. “You almost died,” she whispers, the very idea crushing, haunting. 

He huffs against her hair and presses his mouth to the crown of her head. “I’m okay.”

Liar. “Stiles-”

“Let’s go to my house. You shouldn’t be out right now. You’re still hurt.”

His hand flutters over the bandage on her side that covers her still fresh stitches. At his almost-touch, they flare to life with pain, as if to remind her that she should be in the hospital. 

He guides her out and back to the Jeep, his hand resting so solidly on her shoulder and she feels guilty for taking comfort from someone who needs it more. 

The drive to his house is silent, their minds too preoccupied with theories and mysteries. The sheriff isn’t home, a fact Stiles meets with audible relief. She follows him up the stairs to his room and sits on his bed, scraping the dirt from her feet with the washcloth he handed her before getting in the shower.

To get the blood off.

Are they really just teenagers?

“I’ll tell him.” She jumps a little at his voice. She didn’t hear him come back into the room. “I just have to figure out how-”

His cell phone rings and his hands shake as he pulls it from his pocket. “It’s Scott.”

Stiles gives her a look that she understands to mean that he’s not going to do it now. That he can’t. 

“Scott.”

Whatever Scott says trips Stiles up even more. He rakes his hands through his hair repeatedly as he listens to whatever Scott’s telling him. When he hangs up, he tells her about the break-in at the animal hospital and the missing bodies. 

Yea we already knew that, she doesn’t say. 

“He wants us to go to Eichen House and talk to Valack.” He says it like that’s what they normally do on Thursdays. “Tomorrow.”


	2. Echo House (Before and After)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia and Stiles and what might've happened before and after their visit to Valack.

Echo House (Before and After)

“Take off your shirt.”

Stiles contorts his face into an expression that manages to be confused, terrified, and excited all at once. “Did you just…what did you…what?”

Lydia tucks in her smile as she holds up the first aid kit.

“Oh.” Stiles blinks away whatever images had come barging into his brain. “Forget it. I’m fine.” 

Lydia surveys the shoulder he’s currently favoring with her no-bullshit eye. “A chimaera bit you…or scratched you, or…whatever.” She strides across the room purposefully and shoves him down on the bed. “You need medical attention. Now, if you don’t trust me to handle it, I’ll call Melissa up and-”

Stiles shrugs off his hoodie with an over-exaggerated sigh. “This is so not how I imagined you getting me out of my clothes for the first time.” 

He pulls his shirt over his head, from the back of the neck like most boys do and her mouth goes a little dry at all the pale, taut skin he reveals as the fabric of his tee-shirt disappears. “Me either,” she says quietly, unthinkingly.

“What?” he asks but she’s far off. 

She’s had dreams that start almost exactly like this: in his room, standing over him, stripping his shirt off, connecting all the moles on his back with her tongue-

“Lydia!”

“What?” she snaps. 

“What are you staring at? Is it that bad?” He looks over his shoulder, as if he’s about to find something truly gruesome growing out of his back.

She shakes her head, focuses on what she’s actually supposed to be doing. “No, it’s not. At least, I don’t think it is.”

He hisses and whines like a total baby as she cleans the wound with alcohol swabs. It’s not that deep but the blood worries her. It’s darker than dried blood normally is and thicker, harder to dig out from the grooves of his flesh than she thinks it should be. And the skin around the punctures is icy cold. 

She pulls the needle out behind his back, so he doesn’t freak. She didn’t know if she was going to use it before she saw the damage but now that she has, she thinks it’s the best idea. It’s also a good idea not to warn Stiles about what’s coming.

“Are you done yet?”

“Almost,” she says casually. Then she stabs him.

“Ow! What the hell is that?”

“Relax. I just want to test a small sample of your blood.”

“My blood!” He twists around as she pulls the needle from his back and injects it into a vial. It moves slowly from the syringe and she tries to hide the worry she feels when Stiles stares up at her with an outraged expression. “You sneaky vampire.” 

“Vampire?”

“Stealing blood from an unaware human when they aren’t looking? Sounds like a vampire to me. What do you want with it anyway? You’re not gonna drink it, are you?” 

“I’m going to test it. We don’t know what was on those teeth…or claws or….he might’ve poisoned you.” 

Stiles rolls his eyes, like she’s the ridiculous one, and snatches his shirt from the floor. He pulls it on and she admires the interplay of muscles in his arms and back as he moves. 

“It might be nothing, but it might be something. At least with this,” she holds up the vial, “we’ll know for sure.” 

“Great,” he says, beyond uninterested, “let’s go.” 

“Or-”

“Nope.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.” 

“Lydia, You’re not going without me.”

She bites her lip. Totally what she was going to say. 

She doesn’t want to go without him. She never wants to step foot in that place again and she really doesn’t want to go there (or anywhere, honestly) without Stiles right beside her. But she stands defiantly in the doorway of his bedroom, arms crossed, trying to talk some reason into his thick skull. 

“You don’t have to come. You’re hurt; stay here and rest. Malia’s not going either.”

“Malia’s not going because she knows that place is a nightmare asylum of insanity and death.” 

Stiles’ grimace is disturbingly obvious as he shrugs into his hoodie. “You should really have someone with actual medical experience look at that.”

“It’s just sore. I’ll be fine in a few days.”

“And you’re diagnosis is based on all that supernatural/chimaera first aid you know?” 

Stiles stares her dead in the eye before answering, simply and irritatingly, “Yes.” 

“Stiles-”

“You’re not going without me.” 

“Scott and Kira are going to be there.” She’s not sure why she’s trying so hard to get him to stay home. There’s been a roiling in her gut ever since she heard he wasn’t at school, visions of his shoulder turning black and rotten, dying in a pool if his own blood as it gushed from his open would throughout the night plagued her dreams. She wants to keep an eye on him, wants him within arm’s reach at all times. 

“I’m not going to let you go to a place where one of the orderlies almost killed you.”

“He almost killed you, too,” she reminds him, as if he’ll ever forget the way Brunski brought the syringe down to her neck. 

“And we’re both still alive. See, teamwork!”

He sidesteps past her so quick she can’t even think of a replay before she’s forced to follow him down the stairs. 

And thank the stars and sun and moon that he never ever listens to her (or anyone) because it’s only the insistent press of his fingers on her back that keeps her moving forward. She glances at their safety net, Scott and Kira, firmly planted behind the mountain ash barrier. 

She can’t smile. There’s no reassurance in her body. The only thing that feels sure and safe is Stiles’ presence behind her but she’s never been so acutely aware of their fragile humanity before. 

So Scott does it for her, gives her all that hope and strength she needs with just a quick twitch of his mouth and those never-ending brown eyes and she thinks, True Alpha, indeed, before she and Stiles round the corner of the hallway and he disappears from her view. 

At the end of it all, her scream and Valack’s half-assed answers, when Stiles is pressed against the wall so tightly she can feel his body trembling from the pressure while he continuously tightens his grip around her shoulders, his thumb is calloused and rough where it brushes against her collarbone and she grips his forearm to keep herself standing, it feels like a wasted effort. 

“I think we’re okay.” As okay as we’ll ever be again. “Stiles?”

His heart is out of control. It thunders against her spine, quakes her entire being but at least he’s alive and she’s alive and most days it seems like enough but some days-

“No, it’s not okay. All of this, it’s on us. Everything’s that’s happened, everything that’s gonna happen, it’s our fault.”

He’s right, of course. She hates to admit it but he’s always right.

“It’s our responsibility.” 

Stiles doesn’t let go of her hand as they run out of Eichen House. When they see Scott cradling Kira in his arms, deathly still and laid out on the concrete, he squeezes her fingers until her knuckles crack together painfully. She thinks he might be seeing what she is; the scene is eerily familiar. Scott holding the girl he loves, dead, in his arms. 

Allison. 

Stiles pulls her down the steps, she’s barely aware that she’s moving, and only when he lets her hand drop to pull Scott up does she heave a breath because they’re moving and alive, thank god. 

“What happened?” She puts her arm around Kira, who rests almost entirely on Lydia. Stiles gets Scott to his feet but it’s clear to see that they aren’t going to make it far; Scott’s a heavy, muscled Alpha werewolf and Stiles doesn’t exactly lift. 

“Get him to the Jeep, please,” Kira begs and there’s something like guilt in her gasping request. “Help him first, okay. I’ll be right here.” 

Lydia doesn’t want to let her drop back to the steps but Scott’s head is slumping against Stiles’ and Lydia feels her heart lurch painfully at the sight: the strongest man she’s ever known, leaning on his best friend. Kira slips from her arms and she pulls Scott’s other arm over her shoulder. 

“Scott, hey man, you alright?” Stiles asks, his eyes darting over his friend’s face. “Scotty?”

“Yea,” Scott exhales. Lydia can feel his whole body quivering with aftershocks. 

“What happened?”

Scott just shakes his head at her. He leans heavily against the side of the Jeep while Stiles fumbles with the keys. He’s shaking too, like he took some of that perverse energy into his own veins. 

Scott basically collapses in the backseat and Stiles and Lydia run back for Kira, who hesitantly crawls over him. Stiles has just started the car when they both pass out. 

Stiles glances in the rearview mirror, his eyes hard and worried. “She did that to him.” 

“Not on purpose,” she says, even though she shouldn’t have to. There’s a rigid edge set to Stiles’ jaw that she doesn’t like and it seems like her job to soften it. “She loves him.” 

Stiles snaps his head to her so fast, she’s sure that he hurt his neck. He focuses intently on her face, which heats up immediately. Stiles never just looks at her. He makes her feel seen. “She does?”

Lydia wishes she had never said that word. Even when speaking about someone else, it’s too much, too heavy, too meaningful, to say to Stiles. She nods, mouth suddenly, ludicrously dry and Stiles stares back at the road and she’s relieved that his eyes are no longer on her. 

It’s some unspoken agreement that they will all be staying at Scott’s tonight. Sometimes, an Alpha just needs his pack and no one objects when Stiles parks in his driveway or when they half-drag Scott and then Kira upstairs. Stiles and Lydia arrange them on the bed, remove their shoes and Scott’s jacket, and tuck them in. Scott looks young in a way that makes Lydia want to cry. He curls toward Kira and it’s not long before they both pass out again. 

Stiles faces Lydia, running his hand up and over the back of his head. “There’s an air mattress and a couple of sleeping bags. I can sleep on the floor,” he offers and on another night, when they all hadn’t brushed so close to death, she would have easily agreed. 

“Don’t be stupid.” She takes his hand and drags him into the hallway and the next room, where Isaac used to live. She sits on the edge and peels off her boots while Stiles tries and fails not to watch her.

“Lydia, you don’t-”

“Stiles,” she looks at him over her shoulder and ignores the expanse of bed that he’ll soon be occupying. “I’m tired and terrified. I just want to sleep and I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor so quit being weird and just get into bed with me.”

She turns her back on him before she has to witness his reaction to that particular remark and finishes with her boots. He clears his throat and then there’s some rustling noise and she feels him tugging down the covers on that side (his side) of the bed. 

She slides in and he’s already situated, hoodie gone, arm stretched above his head. The bed is much smaller than she had originally anticipated. She turns on her side to face him (she always sleeps on her side, okay) and says, “’Night Stiles.”

“Goodnight, Lydia.” 

He turns the light off and then he fidgets for a bit, trying to get comfortable and Lydia holds in her snappy reprimand, knowing that he’s stressed out of his mind. About Scott and the Dread Doctors and Donovan-

“This is so not how I imagined us in bed together for the first time.”

She laughs, one of those silent, inner chuckles. “Let me guess…too many clothes?” It’s somehow okay to talk like this with him, in the dark, with a hushed voice, almost a whisper, truths never acknowledged out loud between them seem safe in this quiet space between them. 

“For starters.” 

She grins and she knows that he can feel it. “Go to sleep, Stiles.”

“Yea, okay.”

He squishes around a little more but eventually settles down and it’s only when she hears smooth, even breaths from him that she’s finally able to fall asleep herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are always appreciated and thanks for reading!


	3. Dreaded Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles catches Jordan and Lydia sparring and freaks the hell out.

“I’ve got copies for everyone.” Kira pops her head between Scott and Stiles in the front seat and produces an abhorrent heap of photocopied paper, fanning the pages with her thumb until they make a satisfying whirring sound. Scott and Stiles frown at the innocuous stack with twin scowls.

“We should read it together,” Scott says after a moment. “So we can keep an eye on each other.”

Kira smiles stiffly. “Good idea.”

Stiles nods, but it comes with a reluctant sigh as he pulls out his cell phone. “I’ll text Malia and Lydia.”

“And Theo.”

Stiles groans, loudly, obnoxiously.

“Theo,” Scott continues, louder than Stiles’ disapproval, “should be there, too.”

Stiles rolls his eyes but makes no other comment as he puts his Jeep in gear and drives away from the school toward Scott’s house. The copies of The Dread Doctors sit on the console between them and they take turns glancing at it nervously.

“It’s just a book,” Scott says.

A relieved giggle escapes Kira. “Yea, totally, just a book. It’s going to be fine.” 

Stiles catches Kira’s eyes in rearview mirror, snarky reply sitting on his tongue, when his phone buzzes. “Malia’s going to meet us at your place after her last class,” he reads from his screen.

“What about Lydia?” Kira asks.

“She hasn’t texted me back, yet.”

Kira leans forward again. “I haven’t seen her since before lunch.”

“Yeah, it’s her early day,” Stiles says without a thought.

“Let’s just drive by her house. It’s on the way,” Scott suggests as he pulls out his own phone and tries calling Lydia.

“Yeah or we could just….” The Jeep slows to a stop in front of a house.

“Why’d you stop?”

Stiles puts the Jeep in park and undoes his seatbelt.

“That’s her car.” He scrambles out of the driver’s seat; Kira and Scott are close on his heels as he goes up to the front door.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on.” Scott grabs his fist right before he knocks. “Do you even know whose house this is?”

Stiles tugs his hand from Scott’s. “No. That’s why I was going to knock and find out.”

“Stiles, we can’t just knock on a stranger’s door.”

“Why not? Kids do it every year on Halloween.”

Scott closes his eyes for half a second, summoning some magic dealing-with-Stiles patience. “Let’s try calling her again before we start scaring random people.” He hits the call button on his cell and this time, he gets lucky. “Lydia! Hey, where are you?”

Stiles is gesturing to her car directly next to them in the driveway, like ‘duh, she’s right fucking here’ while Scott ignores him and then the front door behind them swings open. Lydia freezes on the threshold. And then Jordan Parrish steps up behind her.

“What are you guys doing here?” She’s staring at Stiles, whose mouth is open comically wide.

“What the hell are you doing here?” His eyes rove over her body. “And what the hell are you wearing?”

She’s in her workout clothes, her jacket tied inconveniently around her waist. “I was just…Jordan was just-”

“Jordan?” Stiles asks incredulously.

“Deputy Parrish,” she emphasizes, “was just teaching me some self-defense.”

Stiles blinks rapidly, glancing between the two of them as if they were caught in the throes of passion rather than just sweaty exercise attire. “Self-defense? Now?”

Lydia takes in his horrified expression, somewhat confused. “Yeah, now. Why?”

He stares at Lydia with angry, fiery eyes. “Why? You’re seriously asking me why?”

“Stiles, calm down, man,” Scott says, clamping a strong hand down on his shoulder.

Stiles rounds on him, his body rumbling with fury. “She has stitches.” He says it slowly, like they’re all too stupid to know what that means. “You have stitches, in your stomach,” he says to Lydia, pointing at the offending bandage that’s taped to her skin. “You’ve been out of the hospital for three days and you’re sparring with this guy.” He gestures at Parrish. “Who’s some bizarre, supernatural creature that randomly bursts into flame.” His arms collapse to his sides, his hands smack loudly on his jeans. “What are you trying to do? Are you trying to kill me?”

“What? Stiles-”

“And what the fuck is wrong with you?” he spits at Parrish. He goes to step around Lydia but she holds up a hand to stop him.

“I asked him to. This was my idea.”

“But he went along with it! A deputy sheriff looked at a seventeen year old girl that just got out of the hospital and thought it’d be cool to start teaching her some ju-jitsu?”

“It was actually just some basic defense moves-”

“Why are you talking?” Stiles glares at Parrish and there’s a deadly rage stirring the brown depths of his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ll shut up.” Parrish nods and he has the decency to look abashed.

“Leave him out of this.” Lydia gets into Stiles face, heightened pride and irritation flooding her brain. “I chose to do this. If you’re going to get mad at someone-”

“You’re damn right, I’m gonna get mad!” He surges forward and grips her stomach, places his hand over her bandage. “You couldn’t wait? Nine more days until these come out and you couldn’t wait?” he whispers, barely restrained hysteria coloring his voice.

She has to close her eyes for a second. _He counted the days._ “Stiles, it’s fine.”

He shakes his head and tightens his fingers on her. “It’s not fine. You’re not fine. You’re hurt. You can’t do this….you can’t get hurt again…you…” He looks at her then, like he did before, when there was more of her blood on the Sheriff’s office floor than under her skin, when neither of them could really breathe, when she saw him and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’d lie down in her place and take all her pain onto himself if he could.

_I will literally go out of my freaking mind._

“Stiles-” she tries but he’s spiraling, holding her tighter, like she might evaporate with the next gust of wind. Scott steps up and wraps his arm around Stiles’ shoulders.

“Come on, dude. She’s okay. Everything’s okay.” He takes Stiles’ wrists in his hands and eases them off Lydia. Her pale skin has gone bright red from the pressure of his fingers. Scott looks back at her as he starts to drag Stiles away. “We’re reading the book, tonight, at my house.” She nods. Words are impossible as she watches Stiles grip Scott’s back.

Kira offers her a small smile, trying to diffuse the tension. “We’re going now, if you want to-”

“I need a shower but I’ll be there….” Stiles looks up again and the way he looks at her makes her stomach swirl. “Soon.”

Stiles nods once and she almost feels better until Scott takes his keys from him and insists on driving.

***

For a book that’s supposedly going to help them figure out the very real threat in their lives, it’s a downright boring read. Malia has been making coffee non-stop. The living room has turned into a kind of fort, pillows and blankets spread over the floor, sleepy teenagers draped over any available space.

Stiles hasn’t said a word to her since she showed up. She hasn’t tried to talk to him either and Lydia is no werewolf but she swears she can smell the anxiety dripping from his every pore. He keeps glancing at her and the area where her skin is still mending. She’ll never admit it, but she’s sore everywhere, especially around her stitches. Imagining what Stiles would do if he knew kind of terrifies her. Before she can contemplate over that for too long, Scott walks over, carrying two mugs that have steam rising from the top.

“Bless you,” she says as he hands her one. Hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows, her favorite. He sits next to her chair on the floor.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure.”

He glances back to the kitchen, where Stiles and Malia are talking in hushed voices. “Today, when Stiles got so upset, did he seem a little off to you?”

“A little, I guess…he was mad.”

“Yeah, he was and I get it.” He taps her leg twice. “But there was just something in his eyes and his voice…” He looks at his friend again, just as Stiles starts rubbing the shoulder that Donovan bit. “Did he seem…void to you?”

It’s like an icy knife to the gut, that word and all the memories it drags up. Lydia’s got a well of bad feelings and emotions from the time when Stiles was possessed and Allison died and she never opens the well but that one fucking word almost has her crying into her beverage.

“He’s fine,” she says because she has to say it out loud to believe it herself. “He was just mad.”

Scott gives her a wry look. “He was more than mad.”

“Yeah. I don’t know why he overreacted like that.”

Scott snorts and rolls his eyes. “Really? You have no idea?” he whispers.

She has ideas, plenty about Stiles, but none she’s willing to voice. She shrugs off his assuming tone. “But I don’t think there’s anything else going on. He’s just stressed. We all are.”

“Is that why you started taking self-defense lessons with Deputy Parrish? You're stressed?”

“I started taking self-defense so the next time a homicidal chimera decides to attack me, maybe I can duck quick enough to avoid being impaled.”

Scott smiles ruefully, sadly, ashamedly but before she can assure him that he’s not at fault, that she doesn’t blame him, he says, “And you asked Parrish because?”

She shakes her head, annoyed that she feels guilty for something that she really shouldn’t. “Why not him? He knows how to fight.”

“So do I.”

She smiles then. “You’ve been a little busy.”

He gets to his knees and leans into her, placing his arms on her lap. A sense of comfort and safety clouds around her as he gazes into her eyes. “I’m never too busy for you.” Scott’s always earnest and genuine and she loves him for it.

“I know, Scott.”

“I’d be happy to teach you. It’s a good idea, for you…and for Stiles.” He glances at his best friend again, his earlier anxiousness returning to turn down his mouth.

“The frail humans.”

Scott grins as he looks at her again. “I’ve never thought of you as frail.”

“Damn right.”

He laughs a little before standing up. “You getting anything from that, yet?” He asks, gesturing to the book in her lap.

“Not yet. You?”

“Nope.”

A creaking draws their attention just in time for them to see Kira disappearing up the stairs. “I better-“ Scott motions after Kira and Lydia just nods with a small smile. Scott takes the stairs two at a time after his girlfriend.

It’s not long after Scott retreats to his room that Malia falls asleep. After her, Theo succumbs to exhaustion. Lydia’s close to sleep too, only a primal sense of self-preservation keeping her gaze on the words in front of her but even her stubbornness has it’s limits. She falls asleep in her chair, the last thing she sees being Stiles’ shoes at her feet.

***

_"Harder."_

_Lydia tosses her hair from her face before launching herself at him, an angry snarl ripping up her throat as she swings her arm at Jordan's face. He deflects her easily, spinning her around until he has her back pinned to his chest. "Come on. You can do better than that." He tightens his grip and nearly brushes the shell of her ear with his lips as he leans into her. "You're faster than that."_

_She struggles against him but he's too strong. She can't budge out of his hold. She hisses at the pain radiating from her stitches. "Okay, I got it. Let me try again." It takes another too-long moment before he lets her slither back to her starting position. She readies herself, stance wide, fists in front of her face. "I'm ready. You come at me this time."_

_His eyes flare, hot and hungry. "You sure you can handle me?"_

_"Let's find out." He crouches into a springing stance and Lydia sees the fire just before he pounces toward her. It snakes over the skin of his hands, thin tendrils of flame that extend out past his fingertips in deadly wisps. "Jordan!" she yells but it's too late._

_He knocks her to the ground. His eyes go totally black. She can smell smoke on his breath as he bends over her. His face is turning ash gray, like he's burning from the inside out. "Please, don't."_

_"Should've listened to Stiles."_

_Then he plunges his hand into the exposed line of stitches on her stomach. His hand and arm disappear into her like a knife cutting through hot butter and she screams, ear-splitting, earth-shaking and her eyes burst into flame-_

"Stiles!" He jolts awake. Everything's a little blurry as the last bits of his disorientation slink away but he can make out the curves of her face and then her eyes, her green, normal, not-on-fire eyes come into focus. She's staring at him and he has to imagine that whatever he was doing while in the depths of his nightmare must have been pretty worrisome.

"Bad dream." His voice comes out all raspy, like he was the one with fire blazing inside him.

"About what?" She asks and there's a hint of hysteria at the edge of her words. She looks nearly on the verge of tears too. "Stiles." She takes his hand, which he hadn't realized had been clenching at the seams of his jeans. The knuckles are white and his palms are sweaty. She runs her thumb back and forth over his knuckles and he watches her. It’s a potent heat on her body. Every inch of her skin that his sanguine eyes touch prickles with goose bumps.

He glances at Malia, still miraculously asleep on the couch then cocks his head toward the kitchen before getting up. She follows him without question. He’s pouring coffee, hunched over the kitchen counter. She stops behind him, keeps a little distance between them and waits. He turns toward her and their eye-lines catch in that magnetic way they do and she gasps a little at how wrecked he looks. “Every since your little near-death experience with Tracy, I’ve been having nightmares."

“Nightmares,” she whispers. The past experiences she’s had with his nightmares are some of the worst of her short life.

“They’re always about you.”

“What?”

“On the floor of the Sheriff’s office, covered in blood.” His voice hitches. He sniffs as she breathes out slowly. “In the hospital, strapped up to a thousand machines that are keeping you alive.”

“Stiles-” He steps forward, eyes shut, blindly reaching for her and it’s goddamn magical the way his hands find their perfect resting place on her waist even as he’s not looking. He presses their foreheads together and his lips catch on her nose when he speaks again.

“All I see, when I close my eyes, is your blood everywhere. Every night and almost always I see you, struggling for breath, trying to smile for me, cause you felt like you were dying and you didn’t want me to know.”

There’re others in the house, someone could even be watching them but she’s so removed from the outside world at this moment. It’s just her and Stiles and his inability to inhale a proper breath. She reaches up to his face and swipes her thumbs over his cheekbones. “Look at me. Stiles. Look at me.” He swallows and she knows it’s painful. His eyes are so bright when they land on her again, alight with a terrible vigor. “I’m okay. I promise. And I’ll stop, I’ll stop until I’m better, okay?”

He nods and then he’s sinking down and his nose grazes the side of her neck, like he’s inhaling her heartbeat. “I can’t lose you,” he says, so softly and she clenches her jaw to keep herself from tearing up.

“You won’t.” She hugs him, wraps her arms around him to keep him from falling completely apart. He cups the back of her neck but she can feel his hand shake there. “I’m sorry,” she repeats.

He tilts his head and then his lips are on her cheek and they both almost lose their balance at the contact. “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t get hurt…again.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?” He leans back and there’s that look again, like she’s got his heart in the palm of her hand.

“I promise,” she promises.

She learns, a little bit later, that promises break all the time.


	4. Reader's Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You had your memory.” It’s not a question and he doesn’t answer. 
> 
> OR
> 
> Stiles and Lydia after the hospital fiasco.

They sit in her car, staring out the windshield, not speaking. Lydia makes a fist like Parrish taught her around her keys. She doesn’t trust herself to drive just yet. She relishes the pain in her palm where the jagged teeth dig into her flesh. Physical discomfort is inexplicably soothing after what she’s just experienced emotionally. 

 

Next to her, Stiles doesn’t seem to be faring much better. He keeps touching his fingertips together, slowly, one by one. The second she saw him stumbling across the parking lot, she knew he’d been crying. He’s still sniffling and the small sounds of his grief vibrate in her mind until she can feel his misery like a tangible weight pressing against her ears.

 

“You had your memory.” It’s not a question and he doesn’t answer.

 

A silent Stiles is not something she’s had a lot of practice with. She’s used to his voice, has even grown to enjoy the way he rants about nothing and everything, but the silent version of him is downright disturbing. He’s thinking too much, overanalyzing something to death. “Stiles!”

 

He jerks his head to her, like he’s guilty of something. “What?” He’s suddenly breathing hard, filling the small space of the front seat with desperate panting noises. The last time she’d seen him like this, she’d had to kiss him to calm him down.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

She expects him to say ‘fine’, to blow her off and pretend that everything is as status quo as Beacon Hills allows things to be but he surprises her by shaking his head. He licks his lips and swallows and she follows the tensing motion of his throat with rapt eyes. He seems embarrassed, which is another thing she isn’t used to seeing in Stiles.

 

“My mom was here a lot, near the end. She used to wander the halls, confused about why she was here. The dementia, it made her think crazy things. She used to think that I was trying to kill her.”

 

“Oh, my god,” she whispers.

 

Stiles blinks away a few tears and Lydia has to avert her eyes when they fall down his pale cheek.  His hands tremble and she leans forward instinctively to hold them in hers. It hurts when he tangles their fingers together. 

 

“That was my memory, my parents on the roof…arguing…about me.” He sniffs again and wipes his nose on his sleeve. “She thought I was trying to hurt her and then…she came at me…and I tried to get her to stop but she was so angry and scared of me-”

 

The rest of the scene unfolds in Lydia’s mind as if she’d seen it herself. Maybe it’s a Banshee thing, the way she can imagine in specific detail the way Stiles threw his arms up and ducked his head and the way his voice broke as he begged his mom to stop and she presses her lips together to swallow the scream that’s gathered at the base of her throat.

 

“Stiles,” she breathes and then he falls into her.

 

There’s an intimacy in grief: the way he collapses against her when she reaches for him, the sob she has to suppress when she feels him shiver. His tears hit her neck and slide down the slope of her collarbone. There’s the familiar aching warmth swelling around her heart when the rough pads of his fingers grip tight to the back of her neck. It’s painful and tender and some deep part of her sighs at the closeness.

 

It feels longer but it’s only a minute before he pulls away. He sounds regretful when he speaks. “I’m sorry.”

 

That thread that binds them to each other hooks itself harder in her gut as Stiles looks out the window. She’s surprised how much it hurts, having him turn away from her.

 

“That’s okay.”

 

Watching him, she’s unsure if he was just reluctant to share anymore or if he wishes someone else was there with him. The thought pushes to the forefront of her brain relentlessly. This moment isn’t about her, at all, but she still feels wretched for the sinking of her stomach when he refuses to look at her for the entirety of the drive to his house. 

 

After she parks the car in his driveway, he just looks at her for a second and Lydia wills her cheeks not to blush under that contemplative stare. “You have your memory?”

 

She nods.

 

“Wanna talk about it?”

 

_No! It was awful and traumatic and I never want to think about it again._

But the damn thread is humming happily and she can hear reverberations in the air between them: _staywithhimstaywithhimstaywithhim._

 

To him, she just shrugs.

 

He nods sagely and there’s a certain kind of wisdom in his dark eyes that he’s too young to have.

 

“My dad drinks.” The words tumble from his mouth hard like marbles on tile: crack, crack, crack. He scratches at the back of his neck as the statement hangs between them.

 

“Wanna talk about it?” Lydia asks, not unkindly but with a wryness she hopes he’ll appreciate.

 

She’s rewarded with a smile that almost reaches his eyes. “What I meant was, there’s alcohol in that house and I’m going to drink some and I think you should join me.” He turns to her with only a half-hopeful expression.

 

“Are you sure that’s the smartest way to cope with this?”

 

“Oh, I know it’s not.” He shakes his head, purses his lips. “But I’m still gonna do it. After all…” He looks at his house as if it were a monster. “I take after my old man.”  

_Staystaystay._ The tugging is insistent.

 

“Well, I would hate for you to have to drink alone.”

 

“Right? ‘Cause, that would be the real tragedy here.”

 

Inside, he throws her a blanket then disappears into the kitchen. She settles on the couch like they do this all the time, smiling faintly to herself as she hears him bang around the cabinets. When he returns, he sits down close enough to grab part of the blanket and drape it over his legs. His long body jostles the couch, his knee bumps hers, and Lydia’s heart gives a pleasant lurch when their fingers brush as he hands her a glass of brown liquid.

 

“Scotch?”

 

Stiles shakes his head and sniffs at the contents in his glass. “Whiskey.”

 

The second it hits her tongue she wants to spit it out. But Stiles is appraising her and not even trying to hide his sly amusement so she straightens her back and swallows. “That,” she says in her best haughty voice, “is disgusting.”

 

“It won’t be after a few more sips.”

 

She rolls her eyes but sips again as he watches her with an expectant expression.

 

If he was a werewolf, he could stab her with his claws and see the whole thing for himself. She kind of wishes that was an option.

 

But his eyes never leave her as she recounts the gruesome tale of her grandmother’s suicide. When she describes, in too vivid detail, the way the blood on her head faded into the strands of her hair, he reaches over and lays his hand gently on her arm. The nervous ball of fright in her goes strangely still under the pressure of his long, cool fingers.

“I’m fine,” she says at the end of her tragic tale but Stiles just squeezes her arm tighter. “Could’ve been worse.”

 

The fresh terror of seeing Scott completely beaten, cradled in his mother’s arms as he struggled for a full breath descends on them both. They’re both thinking the same thing: if Scott can’t beat all this, no one can.

 

“Do you know what Scot’s memory was?” Lydia asks. If anyone would know, Stiles would.

 

“I’m pretty sure.”

 

He says nothing else and Lydia is simultaneously annoyed and impressed. Stiles is loyal to a fault, even with the enormous thing he’s still not told Scott about, and he’d never betray Scott like that, even to her. But she still wants to know, if for no other reason than to share the pain of her Alpha. She doesn’t know if the terror Scott had felt had shot through Stiles the way it had through her. It might’ve been a Banshee reaction or it might’ve been a pack thing. Impossible to know, like so many other things in their lives.

 

After a few silent seconds, Stiles let out a sniffling laugh. “I miss this.”

 

Lydia arches a brow, like, _really, you miss having nightmares in broad daylight and being haunted by your dead mother?_

 

“No, I mean…” He rolls his eyes and spins the liquid around in his glass until the cylindrical motion makes a little tornado in his glass. “I miss talking to you.” He looks up, their gazes catch, she smiles. “You’re good to talk to.”

 

She looks down as a blush warms her cheeks. She’s no stranger to compliments but they’re usually more along the lines of ‘you’re so beautiful, your house is amazing, your voice is sexy.’ Nothing about her character or her smarts, especially not from the guys she likes-

 

And there it is.

 

She likes him and probably more. She knows this but it’s a vague, non-descript knowledge, the kind that exists on the edge of acknowledgment and is never examined in detail.

But something about the right here moment demands her attention. Stiles is looking at her, like really looking in that way he does that makes everything inside her feel fuzzy, waiting for some sort of response and she says, “You too,” before she says something that she can’t take back that will change everything.

 

He nods and seems a little crestfallen and Lydia has to wonder what exactly he’d expected her to say.

 

‘Cause there’s plenty. There’s a notebook under her mattress, a diary of sorts she’s been keeping ever since Allison died and the pages are filled with things that went unsaid between them. It doesn’t matter if Allison instinctively knew about most of them. Lydia still wishes she had actually spoken the words, given her feelings for her best friend to the universe.

 

Now, there’s so much unsaid between her and Stiles and the threat of him never knowing kind of crushes her heart. She wants to say everything, tell him all about the burning, incessant moments when she thinks of nothing but kissing him. It started in the locker room but there was a little something there before even that. 

 

All the close calls lately add an extra urgency to her sudden desire to empty her soul out to him and she reaches forward and grips his hand in a gesture that can only be described as intimate. She presses their palms together and Stiles’ lips part as she threads their fingers together. “Stiles, I-“

 

The sudden inelegant blaring melody of a One Direction song causes them both to jump back. Stiles digs his cell phone from his jeans and sighs when he reads the screen.

 

“Hold on. It’s Malia.”

 

And there it is.

 

“Right.”

 

He gets up and turns his back to her, whispering to his girlfriend so she can’t hear but she still manages to get the words, ‘here,’ ‘soon,’ and ‘okay,’ before he faces her way again. “She’s on her way.”

 

That has Lydia up and off the couch faster than a werewolf. “I’ve got to go,” she insists, as if he didn’t just subtly tell her to get out.

 

“Are you sure? You can stay and hang out with us if you don’t want to be alone.”

 

Alone is all she wants to be. The last thing she needs right now to see them being a ‘we.’ “That’s okay. I’ve got homework and I need a shower.”

 

_So lame._ She needs to work on her excuses but Stiles doesn’t call her on her bullshit. It’s easier that way. It’s just easier to let her leave.

 

She gathers her purse up, feels the last remaining effects of the whiskey drip away as she walks to the door. He’s standing far too close when she looks back. “Bye, Stiles.”

 

“Bye, Lydia.”

 

The door slams and she goes to her car and she’s simultaneously proud of herself and ashamed when she doesn’t shed a single tear on her ride home.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is the first chapter of my interpretation of Season 5. I started here because I felt like this was such a wasted opportunity for Stiles and Lydia. It really made me angry so I decided to write my own version and I like it so much that I think I'm going to continue it. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! Any and all feedback is welcome and appreciated!


End file.
